http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1572244,00.html
This is going to be a disaster. Thousands of Bushtowns all over the South.
After the floods: trailer parks for a million
Jamie Wilson Baker, Louisiana
Saturday September 17, 2005
The Guardian
It is being called the biggest federal housing programme in United States history, a plan to build up to 300,000 temporary homes for nearly a million people flooded out by Hurricane Katrina. All along the Gulf Coast contractors are constructing huge trailer parks. The scale of the enterprise dwarfs both the rebuilding of Chicago after the great fire of 1871 and San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.
Well, there's no way anything could go wrong with this, right? More after the jump...
Planners and officials are worried about the long-term ramifications if people are stuck in temporary accommodation for years. "We have never had to deal with anything like this in US history," said Ruth Steiner, an associate professor at the department of urban and regional planning at Florida University. "They are looking at trying to house more than a million people, so you are basically dealing with trying to build multiple cities."
On the outskirts of Baker, east of Baton Rouge, contractors have less than two weeks to turn 60 acres of prairie into a town for several thousand people. While bulldozers dig drainage ditches, men in fluorescent waistcoats use orange flags to show where 600 trailers will be, along with a network of limestone roads, parking areas and sewage treatment facilities.
The park is one of many. Emergency officials are mapping out new towns made up of as many as 25,000 mobile homes. The plan is to open 30,000 new homes every two weeks. Stores, restaurants and other facilities will come later, but the priority is getting people out of shelters and under their own roofs.
(more at link)
If you want to know why this is going to be a disaster, read this article on "FEMA City"...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091601922.html
Hurricane Charley Victims
FEMA's City of Anxiety in Florida
Many Hurricane Charley Victims Still Unsure of Next Step
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A01
...
Forman's place is FEMA City, a dusty, baking, treeless collection of almost 500 trailers that was set up by the federal emergency agency last fall to house more than 1,500 people made homeless by Hurricane Charley, one of the most destructive storms in recent Florida history. The free shelter was welcomed by thankful survivors back then; almost a year later, most are still there -- angry, frustrated, depressed and increasingly desperate.
"FEMA City is now a socioeconomic time bomb just waiting to blow up," said Bob Hebert, director of recovery for Charlotte County, where most FEMA City residents used to live. "You throw together all these very different people under already tremendous stress, and bad things will happen. And this is the really difficult part: In our county, there's no other place for many of them to go."
(more at link)
And that is after a year! There will be Bushtowns all over the South, just like FEMA City, for years and years.
How about just using Federal money to put people in apartments and communities? Nah, they might get ideas about staying... and "change the character of the neighborhood" as a real estate agent might say...